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Tuesday, 15 November 2016

Recently, the
British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) published their annual incident report which showed
228 ‘reported’ incidents throughout the UK this season. And looking at the report there are repeated
incidents that are seen year in year out, such as poor navigation, poor buddy
awareness, incorrect use of equipment, oxygen toxity and out of gas to name a
few. Luckily, most of them are very
minor and without serious injury. After
looking at the report one may think, “How did that happen? It’s obvious”, and afterwards it’s clear, but
at the time, possibly not. But hindsight
is always 20:20. But why did the
incident occur? Were they taught
incorrectly? Probably not, although it
can happen. But unfortunately, sometimes
we’ll never know. Human error, mistakes and bad decisions? In most cases. Again, but why? They weren’t trained to make that decision. One such factor could be the normalisation of
deviance. Small steps away from the norm
which at the time are very small, but afterwards are way off from our start
point. Hence looking back, hindsight is
20:20. And if we’re all honest, we’ve
probably all got away with things that we shouldn’t have done.

So why do we make errors that go against our training?

That is why
Gareth has developed the Human Factors Skills in Diving course, or to be
precise, courses.They’re designed to
improve the knowledge, skills and safety of all divers and is aimed at
instructors, instructor trainers and those undertaking higher risk diving such
as technical divers and cave divers.But
more of that later.

Who is Gareth?

Gareth Lock is
a retired Royal Air Force senior officer Navigator of 25 years, who was both a
senior supervisor and a tactical flight instructor on an operational C-130
flying squadron.He has a MSc in
Aerospace Systems from Kingston University and in 2012, Gareth started his
PhD, examining the role of Human Factors in SCUBA diving incidents at Cranfield University.As a diver Gareth is an Open Circuit advanced
trimix diver (Technical Diver Level 2 with GUE) and normoxic trimix CCR diver
(JJ-CCR with TDI).He is a keen
underwater photographer, he’s had published work in diving magazines and
journals, he’s presented at international diving conferences, he manages the Diving Incident and Safety Management Systemincident database, and has most recently been appointed GUEs Director for
Risk Management.

“Most diving accidents or incidents are not down to undetected failures or
even detected failures, they are down to miscommunication, poor decision
making, inexperience, peer pressure, poor teamwork...and yet none of the
training courses formally teach this in an integrated manner.Improve your decision-making, situational
awareness and communication to make your diving more fun, instruction more
effective and diver safer in the process.This is a modular online course with more than 3 hours of engaging and
detailed material split into 15 minute sections, with additional research-based
resources provided for those who want to delve deeper.”

Technically
I’ve done this course twice; once when it was first launched, and again a
pre-learning for the Human Factors Skills in Diving - Two Day Course.But that is one of the beauties of the class,
once you have your login, you can go back again and again and refresh your
knowledge.

The course
itself covers several topics:

1.
Introduction.

Human error – We can’t avoid it.

2. Decision Making: Why we make good & bad
decisions.

System 1 and system 2.

Checklists.

Normalisation of deviance.

Useful links & additional reading.

3. Situational
Awareness.

Why we miss things.

Useful links & additional reading.

4.
Communications.

Enablers & barriers.

Useful links & additional reading.

5. Teamwork.

Clarity of role.Mutual accountability.

Useful links & additional reading.

6. Leadership
& Followership.

Key to effective teams.

Useful links & additional reading.

7. Performance
Shaping Factors.

Stress & fatigue.

Useful links & additional reading.

8. Case Study,
Just Culture & Summary.

Case study.

Case study detail.

Just culture: Essential if we are to improve
learning.

Summary

Is it worth
doing?Absolutely.Regardless of agency, current skill set or
certification, this course will increase your overall awareness of awareness,
stress management and leadership to name but a few which will result in a more
effective individual and team performance, both in diving, and in ‘the real
world’.And at £69/$99 it won’t break
the bank either.Far cheaper than any
agency specialty course, and just as valuable.

“This two-day course is globally unique in diving. It combines GemaSim, a
computer-based simulation developed specifically for personal and team
performance development, with decades of human factors research and
practice distilled and condensed into a structured and coherent
framework.This premium course is
for instructors, instructor trainers and those who are exposed to higher levels
of risk (cave and technical diving) to improve their personal and team performance,
and improve their safety as a by-product.The course has been taken by Training Directors of four leading
technical agencies (GUE, IANTD, TDI and SSI XR) - all would thoroughly
recommend the course and have implemented lessons learned in their own
practice.”

Day1:

1. Introduction
to Human Error and why HF is important.

2. Familiarisation
Mission of GemaSim.

3. Decision
Making.

4. Mission 1.

5. Situational
Awareness.

6. Mission 2.

Day 2:

1. Recap.

2.
Communication.

3. Mission 3.

4. Teamwork,
Leadership/Followership, Stress.

5. Mission 4.

6. Debrief on
class and setting goals.

The course:

Prior to the
course there was plenty of communication by Gareth including instructions,
pre-reading and expectations.On the day
of the course I started a little tired as this backed on to another amazing EuroTEK, which funnily
enough links to one of the topics Gareth covers on the course; fatigue due to
driving down the morning of a dive to save costs.Sound familiar?There were 10 students on the course and we
split into 2 groups of 5 for the GemaSim missions (more of that to follow), one
mentored by Gareth and one by Matt Jevon of South West Technical
Diving.

The course was
led by Gareth with interesting leads into topics but it was delivered in such a
way that we, as a course, took over and created a discussion led group.It’s a very effective way of prevention
boredom by permanent send by the instructor, and I’m sure we’re experienced
that as students and have probably been guilty of that as instructors.

GemaSim:

On the initial
instructions there was a link to a short GemaSim video which would help explain the
software.Unfortunately, I accidently
managed to watch the wrong video (don’t ask) but swiftly caught up on the
Familiarisation Mission.On the missions
(45 minutes in duration), we worked as a team of 4 with 2 observers; 1 course
observer and 1 fellow student we all took this role at some point).The missions themselves simulate a space
mission, although from a military point of view, the ‘missions’ were very
loose, and if not focused, you could easily go off on a tangent. This meant effective teamwork was
critical.Each team member held a crew
position with each pair given their own computer.It all sounds simple until you realise each
screen is different.You can view your
controls, but the other pairs display, and visa versa.In addition, one pair had a check list, and
another the task list.Effective
communication would be key to keep the team alive, as well as check list
discipline.For the first mission, I
volunteered to be leader.The mission
was a failure as we didn’t make it back to base in time but it highlighted a
number of factors that could be improved by all team members.For mission 2 I sat out and observed and mission
3 I was a team member.As the missions
progressed, our teamwork improved, despite the complexity increasing.For the final mission, the team volunteered
me to be the leader.We delivered our
best performance completing the mission with 10 minutes’ spare, despite
deliberate communication ‘failures’ by the observers.

Summary:

I wasn’t sure
what to expect from the course to be honest.I’ve known Gareth for a number of years, and in particular, he knows my
military background.On the recent TEKCamp, Gareth
prevented me from being an active participant in the icebreaker challenge
because of this.I know my military
background would definitely highlight some strengths and weaknesses.Leadership I knew I would be good at, and
possibly my communications would need some work.The former I knew was true when I was chosen
to be the group leader on the final mission, although at times I couldn’t help
feeling as though I was on egg shells in case I overstepped around a bunch of
civvies. Being honest, I would say that (in my opinion) I found the missions less
challenging due to my military background compared to others in my group who
were not natural leaders, or in a leadership position in their day job, however
everyone walked away learning something new from themselves.Even me.This was clear to see, especially when you compared the performance of
mission 1 to that of mission 4.

Similar to the Human Factors Skills in Diving - Micro Class, this course
improves your understanding and awareness, but progresses it from the theory to
the practical by putting you outside of your comfort zone.I have no doubt that I’ll still make mistakes
after the course, I’m only human, but, the likelihood is reduced.I can definitely say however that I am a
better team member from it.

I would love to
add some links to YouTube videos which will really make you think, but I
wouldn’t want to ruin the course.

At around
£500/$750 it’s about the same cost as a standard recreational or technical
diving course (less specialities) and it’s worth doing.And to make it easier, you can spread the
cost of the course over 3 monthly payments.You may not get a c-card for your logbook (although you do get a
certificate and t-shirt) but you will walk away a better individual.

If you’re interested in
completing the online Micro Class, then why not use a 25% discount code of ‘TIMGORT2016-25’ at the checkout page.

The
boring bit!

All opinions
expressed in my articles are my own and may differ to other instructor’s and
agency guidelines; by no means are they wrong and I would not wish to disrepute
any of them.This article is for
information only and should not replace proper training.